Any igniter supplied with any motor at the time of certification of a model rocket motor becomes a "model rocket igniter" for all purposes. I have begged AT to supply certain igniters for some motors at some times to legalize common igniters. No go. They did actually recommend drilling of delays on an obscure website, legalizing that process. Thank goodness.

Jerry

I suggest these first:
http://v-serv.com/usr/igniter.htm

I'm sure it's the "home-brewed enhancement" nature of my experiment that contributes to the uneasiness among the more orthodox members of the rocketry community. I am familiar with the codes, rules and regulations and thus don't attempt such things where they are prohibited.

Anyone who assembles and uses a reloadable motor system handles loose black powder and the inherent risks of that highly flammable material. That being said, my homemade quickmatch merely burns rapidly and has very limited explosive potential especially when compared with the much larger quantity of material involved with an ejection event.

As for you young farts, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!

Jerry,

Has this particular staging setup been done by others, including yourself, at some time in the past? If so, by whom and when?

Ted

Yesterday was one of those spectacular spring days when the temperature was about 60, the sky was sapphire blue, humidity was almost nil and the winds were light and variable to non-existent. I mean frickinn purfect!

So I prepped a couple of my primer painted scratch builds, including the upper stage of this one, and headed over to an undisclosed location somewhere in north Texas.

First flight was a BT50 with a C6-5 Estes motor. Perfect, except it landed about 12 feet up in a hackberry tree bordering the as yet unplanted, 200 acre field. It was retrieved just after sunset with the aide of a telescoping pruner pole.

Then we (that's me and three non-rocketeering friends) launched the upper stage of the two-stager with an Estes E12-8 sustainer motor. This is a BT60 rocket with a dry weight of about 5.5 ounces. This baby screamed off the pad and went out of sight. Visual was reacquired about two seconds after apogee at deployment and descent took about two minutes under an 18" hexagonal chute. Touchdown was less than 100 yards away and the only problem was about a 1.5 inch long zipper in the body tube. A six second delay would have been perfect.

Eat your hearts out, city slickers!

I recently conducted a couple of static tests to continue my quest to see if I could modify a composite motor into a useful and reliable booster to ignite a black powder, upper stage sustaining motor. I think this looks promising and will share some pics and a couple of videos which I posted on YouTube.

The first test on 02/08/15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1NVef_Qpws

The second test on 02/12/15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zse-T3uYgz8

And some still pictures.

Attached Thumbnails

       

Looks like it works pretty well, Ted.
Did you always use the 'home brew' quick-match or did you try just plain 'gap staging' for ignition ?

__________________
When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, and HAVOC !

I'm getting closer.

On test number one I made the secondary BP grain from home made meal powder plus a small amount of sugar in solution with rubbing alcohol as a binder. This was compressed into a casting sleeve forming a grain which was allowed to harden for a couple of days. The drawing shows the dimensions of what I made. This grain failed upon ignition allowing a blow through and caused a premature ignition of the sustainer motor.

There was no home made quick match in either test.

I first discarded the red plastic ejection cap and used less than half of the included FFFF BP in the ejection well. Over this I put a small loose wad of cotton and a small piece of masking tape over the rim of the well to secure the cotton. Lastly I perforated the masking tape several times with the point of a sharp pencil so as to release excess pressure. In both tests that procedure worked as intended, though I think a further reduction in the amount of ejection powder is in order.

On test number two I cut 1/8" (theoretically 4 seconds) off of the factory APCP delay grain and inserted it into the casting sleeve until it was flush on one end, leaving a cavity of approximately 3/8 of an inch. Next, I carefully cut a short section out of an Estes A10 13MM motor, wrapped it with one wrap of masking tape and inserted it into a short piece of RCS casting tube. This assembly was then inserted into the remaining cavity in the ejection charge insulator. Lastly and using very slow strokes, I cut off the excess A10 grain with my razor saw making it flush with the other end of the ejection insulator. This modified grain was then inserted into the forward closure in the conventional manner.

The assembly procedure for both tests was 1) modify the stock delay grain as described 2) assemble the motor as per Aerotech instructions using the modified delay grain 3) load the reduced amount of ejection powder into the ejection well as per my description 4) add a 1" long sleeve from a spent 24 mm Estes casing to the forward closure and secure it with one wrap of 3/4" Magic Mending Tape 5) and lastly butt the sustainer motor to the the spent motor piece, again with one full wrap of 3/4" Magic Mending tape.

I've got to get another cup of coffee.

Marilyn got the last of the coffee. Like I needed more?

Anyway, I may do a third static test using less ejection powder and only cutting 3/32" (3 seconds) off of the 4 second factory delay to give it a bit more margin. It has been suggested to me that two seconds is about all you can safely reduce a 4 second delay without risking a blow through, and this is what I did in my original flight test (see post number one of this thread).

I have rebuilt the air frame used in my original flight test and need to paint it with some hideous florescent paint for visibility before another test flight. It's going to go high!

Now before anyone starts throwing the rule book at me, please be advised that my tinkering was done on my own property at my own risk after 70 years of such tomfoolery and for the advancement of mankind.

And kids. remember! DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!

Unless you are an experienced rocketry nerd with a broad pyro streak.........

Sadly, not many teenagers are interested in experiments like this nowadays.

BTW, here http://www.nar.org/pdf/Aerotech/E28.pdf is the NAR test results on the AT E28 reloads. You will notice that the total thrust on this spicy little motor is only 1.22 seconds. You can compare this with my second video to get some idea of what length of time my modifications made to the delay.

And now, back to fighting boredom.